Buff mace's damage

[SeTect.5918]

Yes, another "buff mace"-post. The reason why I write this is that on November 28 balance patch mesmer will get buffs on some confusion based skills and traits.

We remember...they nerfed entire confusion because mirage Was overperforming on some bosses in raids (and maybe on some outside of raids).

However this should not be a cry-post about what other classes do better, but more a reason why engineers mace needs a buff on its confusion too.

They originally nerfed confusion because of mesmer, but now scepter got a massive confusion buff and there is a quite nice confusion skill in illusions now.

However they nerfed whole confusion and not just mesmer confusion. And all confusion skills they killed because of that are still untouched. 

Yea mace has a little bit of support on skill 2, but pistol is ranged. So they both have an advantage, just that pistol deals far more damage (now dont nerf pistol please, its terrible enough).

Also with us getting shortbow next year, we get either a power or condi ranged weapon. But we have pistol already as range condi and we have rifle as range power. But we dont have a condi melee, another reason mace should get buffed.

Lets be clear, confusion is a terrible condition because it deals that low damage (in pve). And in addition to that, mace confusion durations are still stuck at the old confusion balance. So it has low damage, low stacks and low duration. Both skill 2 & 3 need massive buffs at this point. 

You get forced into melee and your reward is to deal no damage. Well its strange to say it like that but its actually true at this point.

Maybe also a trait to deal more confusion damage? That would actually be unique because there are traits for increased bleeding, torment, burning and poison damage but there is currently no trait for increased confusion damage. But thats just an idea of course. 

Thanks for reading and have a nice day.

[Corvolupo.5708]

They must decide what they really want for that weapon... A support Stick? A condi Stick or Power? Right now mace do all this things but very poorly. If It was for me, i'll make It a real support weapon (aoe barriers, might and/or Fury/ prot.  But even melee condi could be neat.

[Icefyer.9208]

52 minutes ago, Corvolupo.5708 said:

They must decide what they really want for that weapon... A support Stick? A condi Stick or Power? Right now mace do all this things but very poorly. If It was for me, i'll make It a real support weapon (aoe barriers, might and/or Fury/ prot.  But even melee condi could be neat.

Since it has a leap that gives regen, vigor and barrier, and used to have barrier on auto-attack, it seems like they intended it to be a support stick, but then never commited to it because the weapon had to function for dps mechs too before the ability to wield it on any spec.

Now that hammer is available as the power-melee of choice, and they gutted the hell out of its condi capability, it should shine as our premier support melee to pair with shield, since almost nothing else really does support period in the engie's weapon arsenal.

Edited November 3, 2023 by Icefyer.9208

[SeTect.5918]

3 hours ago, Icefyer.9208 said:

Since it has a leap that gives regen, vigor and barrier, and used to have barrier on auto-attack, it seems like they intended it to be a support stick, but then never commited to it because the weapon had to function for dps mechs too before the ability to wield it on any spec.

Now that hammer is available as the power-melee of choice, and they gutted the hell out of its condi capability, it should shine as our premier support melee to pair with shield, since almost nothing else really does support period in the engie's weapon arsenal.

Yea i mean i cant identify mace right now.

Is it a power weapon? Seemingly not, both sword and hammer are better.

Is it a condi weapon? It seemed so until they nerfed confusion down so hard. It actually dealt decent damage before. 

Is it a support weapon? Maybe, its the only weapon that gives any kind of support on the first 3 skills. But why only on skill 2? Skill 1 and skill 3 have no support at all. Skill 1 could at least give a boon for 1 second on the 3rd auto attack. And skill 3 could be nice with might and fury. 

However even if its a Support weapon, something like a quick-scrapper or alac mechanist also go for damage, which mace currently has not. Thats why the quick-scrapper build runs hammer and condi alac mechanist runs double pistols.

Edited November 3, 2023 by SeTect.5918

[Corvolupo.5708]

Before the weapon master update i was hoping for a Mech treatment for mace, a functionality change based on trait choice, but now that idea flew ou of the window so i Hope for a clear decision by the developers... Maybe in 3/5 years they'll figure It out...

[Gendalfs.7521]

They can still change weapon dmg and maybe other things depending what elite you have equipped. See Vindicator GS changes for example.

[Icefyer.9208]

19 hours ago, SeTect.5918 said:

However even if its a Support weapon, something like a quick-scrapper or alac mechanist also go for damage, which mace currently has not. Thats why the quick-scrapper build runs hammer and condi alac mechanist runs double pistols.

I guess that depends on if you're dps vs healer. Quick-heal scrapper and HAM I both use mace + shield on, partially because I hate being locked into hammer's 2-second leap spam to provide quickness when I'm not DPS. That's gotten me killed a lot. And shield can give a lot of protection thanks to that one shield trait.

 

19 hours ago, SeTect.5918 said:

Is it a support weapon? Maybe, its the only weapon that gives any kind of support on the first 3 skills. But why only on skill 2? Skill 1 and skill 3 have no support at all. Skill 1 could at least give a boon for 1 second on the 3rd auto attack. And skill 3 could be nice with might and fury. 

Guess that depends on if you consider CC support. 3 does a lot of defiance bar damage, but it does seem pretty meh for it without the mech's additional fist if you're not playing mechanist. Skill 1 USED to have some boons on the third hit, because it'd give barrier, and that tied into the 'when you give barrier you give alacrity', but that was deemed too overpowered when stacked with Quickness letting you heavily over-cap alacrity just with your auto attacks.

So it used to be a way better support weapon than it is now, but they removed almost all of it because it made Mechanist even more busted than it was before they started slapping it with nerf after nerf after nerf to the class itself.

Edited November 4, 2023 by Icefyer.9208

[Icefyer.9208]

8 hours ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

They can still change weapon dmg and maybe other things depending what elite you have equipped. See Vindicator GS changes for example.

How does vindicator change greatsword now?

[jason.1083]

10 hours ago, Gendalfs.7521 said:

They can still change weapon dmg and maybe other things depending what elite you have equipped. See Vindicator GS changes for example.

There's a more native to us example of that with Sword power coefficiency with Non-Holosmith engineers. It doesn't matter how bad confusion is, if mace gets high Condition Power coefficiency it will force confusion to be good.

[SeTect.5918]

7 hours ago, Icefyer.9208 said:

Skill 1 USED to have some boons on the third hit, because it'd give barrier, and that tied into the 'when you give barrier you give alacrity', but that was deemed too overpowered when stacked with Quickness letting you heavily over-cap alacrity just with your auto attacks.

So it used to be a way better support weapon than it is now, but they removed almost all of it because it made Mechanist even more busted than it was before they started slapping it with nerf after nerf after nerf to the class itself.

A boon was not was made the Auto attack busted. It was the fact that it was a very strong boon: alacrity. Plus the barrier.

It had both barrier and a top tier boon. Which was also horrible to balance because they couldnt give the trait an alacrity duration of 0.5 seconds just to nerf the autoattack, because the other barrier skills would only give 0.5 seconds too. 

I m not asking for quickness or alacrity on an autoattack. More something like fury for 1 second on 3rd hit. 

You are right, heal mechanist and scrapper both use mace, but not because its a good support weapon, just because its the only weapon that offers any support. Its Literally just skill 2. For me a support weapon is something that provides support on 2-3 skills if its a 1h, not just a single out of 3 skills. 

There is actually a weapon which mace should be kinda similar to: staff on mesmer.

They are both weapons with condi, while staff gives far more support while still having "decent" or "okay" damage. Thats exactly what mace should be imo. Giving some nice support while NOT being utter trash when it comes to damage. 

Edited November 4, 2023 by SeTect.5918

[Icefyer.9208]

On 11/4/2023 at 4:27 AM, SeTect.5918 said:

I m not asking for quickness or alacrity on an autoattack. More something like fury for 1 second on 3rd hit. 

Of course. I'm not saying that either. It had a boon once, it could do so again. I think it would be interesting to give protection for a couple seconds, since mechanist loses access to that one Alchemy trait that makes your heal skill give protection if you're using medkit.

It's part of why I'm hoping that shortbow might be a support weapon, since Mace + shield is the only one we have and it needs some competition.

Yeah. I don't use damage on mace, so damage boosts to it don't much matter to me, but it definitely needs SOMETHING, since right now the power melee is dominated by hammer and they obliterated its only condition damage.

[SeTect.5918]

8 minutes ago, Icefyer.9208 said:

I think it would be interesting to give protection for a couple seconds, since mechanist loses access to that one Alchemy trait that makes your heal skill give protection if you're using medkit.

True, protection would actually be pretty nice.

9 minutes ago, Icefyer.9208 said:

It's part of why I'm hoping that shortbow might be a support weapon, since Mace + shield is the only one we have and it needs some competition.

Well same thing could be said about condi since p/p is the only condi option too. Thats why i m hoping for condi shortbow 😛
Or they could make shortbow a support one and make mace a proper condi one, then engi finally has a condi melee.
Either way, they can go for support or condi, just dont give us another power weapon please haha. Engis weapon choice is so limited and they gave us 100 power weapons.

12 minutes ago, Icefyer.9208 said:

but it definitely needs SOMETHING, since right now the power melee is dominated by hammer and they obliterated its only condition damage.

+1